Delay Urged on Actions Tied to Tests by Schools

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the country’s largest donors to educational causes and a strong backer of the academic guidelines known as the Common Core, has called for a two-year moratorium on states or school districts making any high-stakes decisions based on tests aligned with the new standards.

The Common Core, originally adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia and supported by the Obama administration, was devised by a group of educators and experts convened by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Over the past three years, teachers have scrambled to adapt classroom curriculums to the new guidelines — reading and math standards for pupils from kindergarten to high school. Some states, including Kentucky and New York, have already rolled out new standardized tests aligned with the standards, while many other states tried out tests this spring.

Teachers’ unions and parent groups have expressed frustration at the speed with which the new standards and tests have been put in place, particularly at a time when states are also instituting new performance evaluations for teachers that tether ratings in part to student test scores. Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina have repealed the Common Core standards altogether.

In an open letter, Vicki Phillips, the director of education for the Gates Foundation, wrote that “the best new ideas aren’t self-fulfilling; they have to be put into practice wisely.”

She added: “No evaluation system will work unless teachers believe it is fair and reliable, and it’s very hard to be fair in a time of transition. The standards need time to work. Teachers need time to develop lessons, receive more training, get used to the new tests and offer their feedback.”

Policy decisions about moratoriums would have to come from state legislatures or education departments. Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said that a blanket delay was not appropriate. “Every state should be thoughtful about how to evaluate teachers and look at a timeline that is best for the students in their state,” Mr. Minnich said.

Some states have already slowed the stakes associated with the new standards and tests. Kentucky has administered tests aligned with the Common Core since the spring of 2012, but test scores have not been included in teacher evaluations and will not be until the 2015-16 school year. Terry Holliday, the state’s commissioner of education, said that even then, the ratings would be based on a three-year rolling average of test scores. “We agree with what Gates is saying,” Mr. Holliday said. “I think that’s what got a lot of states into trouble, which was trying to push too fast with the evaluation systems.”

The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, welcomed the Gates Foundation’s letter on the standards. “We absolutely need more time not only in using them in high-stakes decisions about teachers, but in using them in high-stakes decisions about students, too,” said Becky Pringle, secretary-treasurer of the association.

Some districts and states require that students pass standardized tests in order to be promoted to the next grade level.

Some critics of the standards and testing said that a moratorium was not enough.

“If the sanctions and punishments tied to test scores are wrong now — promoting teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, cheating and gaming the system — the sanctions and punishments will still be wrong two years from now,” Diane Ravitch, an education historian and critic of standardized testing in schools, wrote in an email.

Although states have devised performance rating systems that use the standardized tests as only one part of teacher evaluations, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers’ union, said that “testing fixation is the problem.” She said that evaluations should be based more on project reviews or portfolios of work.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Delay Urged on Actions Tied to Tests by Schools. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe